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Joe Swanson

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Oct, 2020

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150 Stories

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The Weight of Time

The Weight of TimeHave you stopped and thought about yesterday, the day before, or are your thoughts focused only on the future, a tomorrow, the day after? Most of our lives are focused on not what has occurred, but what we hope will occur. It is part of the process of keeping from succumbing to the morbidity that surrounds a complacency we accept. Living in either the past or the future allows us to forgive ourselves for not living in the present. Why we do that? Lying here on the floor, my cheek pressed against the cold tile, my eyes ...

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Vibrations

Weekly Contest #336

Vibrations“Hel-ow… I’ll be with…”“Don’t helooo me.I’ve been on the phone for… must be an hour, maybe two. That music you been piping at me didn’t help my nerves any, if anything, it made things worse. I don’t know what kind of place you think you are running there, but I can guarantee you I’m on the verge of shutting the door on it and never looking back.I know you are probably thinking, what is all this about?Well I wish I knew. One minute I’m as happy as a bee in clover and the next minute it’s raining. Do you know that there should b...

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Snowball's Chance

Snowball’s Chance Snow, what is it? Where does it come from? Who cares, right? I don’t because I don’t think you have to care. Snow is not asking to see your driver’s license of what your credit score is before allowing you to enjoy its benefits. Not all of what we conceive of snow is a benefit, initially. It becomes one, but again that comes later so who cares? Shoveling it is has its rewards don’t get me wrong. There is nothing like the look of a clean dry sidewalk when you are lying on its frozen surface waiting hopefully for a nei...

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Old Times

Old Times “Have you ever considered running away from yourself?”“Is that even possible?”That is how it began that night outside the bus depot. How I got there, I had no recollection. There was a small suitcase I didn’t recognize sitting on the bench beside me, the rain seemed to start and stop without provocation; I was wet, cold, and exhausted. The woman sitting next to me on the bench acted as though I didn’t exist. I was surprised by how natural it felt.I have a habit of talking to myself, answering my own questions, giving myself dir...

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Coloring With Dreams

Coloring With Dreams “What you are saying is that our dreams are a way we rid ourselves of unnecessary emotional integrity, without need of a psychoanalyst ? I find your supposition naïve.” Smith, or Dr. Smith as he prefers to be called, was surprised by my rhetorical reply. He is not used to being challenged or criticized for his work in the area of Superficial Beliefs. He had spent the past ten years defining and redefining terms as they applied to Cognitive Evacuation; a term most often misinterpreted by those who believe dream...

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The Lost Woods

THE LOST WOODS Few believe they will become lost, and yet people every day find it difficult to find their way. Not in a physical sense, or a metaphysical realm, but in life’s trajectory. We are not provided a map when we are born or a place we are asked to accept; we have no alternative. We become part of a race or culture because…? There is no rhyme nor reason to why we are born who we are. There is no one to blame, not one to credit, for as we come to life on our own, so do we depart from it. The difference, that gray area betwe...

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Ascension

Ascension Adolph Monzuer was an invalid. He’d fallen off the roof of his apartment building while chasing a balsa wood glider he’d received for his birthday. He was 10 years old at the time, he was now 84 years old and for all the promises from the medical establishment, he remained unable to walk.As he looked back over his life he realized that perhaps his handicap had been the event that changed the course of his life for the better. He sat in his wheelchair at the bus stop waiting to be scooped up and deposited near the park on He...

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Curried Away

Curried Away “ Vacancy,” the word by the road lighted for the world to see. I walked the few steps to the door which hosted a handwritten message; “return in ten minutes.” It being 6 AM, I was not surprised. I pulled the door open and was accosted by the unforgettable smell of curry. I recognized the smell immediately despite having grown up in the Polish quarter of Chicago. There is something about the aroma when used liberally that brings tears to your eyes without it being the cause of pain. The hall adjoining the front desk was ...

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Jax Dobresnski

Jax Dobresnski One evening I was sitting at “The New U,” a small neighborhood bar. On the stool next to me was Skip Rope Dobresnski. Our meeting I had arranged to appear coincidental, as Skip Rope was not only shy but feared that many of the dreams he’d had of tabloid bottom feeders would materialize, and mistake him for his brother. Since his brother Jax had been mentioned in “New is Different,” a small mostly overlooked book dedicated to the most popular names for newborns in the past year, he had been asked to have his picture tak...

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Another Time

Another Time A ringing telephone, a knock on the door, a siren on the street, each sound absorbed and interpreted by our imagination. * “It was just a dream, wasn’t it? “I don’t know, you tell me.” “You were there, you must know. Did it really happen?” “What I do know is that two people can witness the same incident and come away with two different renditions of what took place.” “Can’t you just this once humor me. You are a world traveler, I’ve only been out of this state twice, and both times to the sa...

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Wobbly Benson

Weekly Contest #304

Wobbly Benson It was my first quarter at the University. I had gone through the usual array of class choices, the professors who taught them, and to be honest I received no reliable information. One advisor told me that Mr. Bensons class, although enlightening in an unvarnished way, was considered incomprehensible by many who dropped the class after the first session, according to the advisor who I felt was not only a bit into herself, but was too conventional to appreciate the nuance between normal and abnormal. I, like many ot...

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Halleluiah

Weekly Contest #303

Halleluiah! The post I received said we are to write about something we don’t understand…or believe we don’t, or simply prefer not to. You can’t get more inclusive than that. Sitting here in this coffee shop surrounded by people who, if asked would tell you that there are endless things they do not understand. Gravity, orbits, string theories, politics, government, religion, the color pink; endless possibilities to prove to ourselves that we not only don’t know everything, but are better off because of it. A friend ...

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Stocking Stuffer

Weekly Contest #301

Stocking Stuffer Have you ever found yourself in a situation not of your own making, which controls your every action. I realize there are consequences for our actions, but in my particular situation the consequence was not only potentially embarrassing, but bordered on the edge of remaining civilized. I know I tend to over react in some situations, but this was not one of them. I should begin at the beginning where someone suggested that the beginning is the best place to start as it references where you are during the episode, with...

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It Could Have Been Worse

Weekly Contest #294

                                            It Could Have Been Worse    “It could have been worse.”   “How? I just don’t see it.”   They’d go on like that for hours if sleep didn’t make them quit competing with one another and communicate like normal people, if there are such ...

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I lost my mind

                                                       I Lost My Mind         “Why are you crying?”     “I don’t see why that is any of your business.”     “I don’t want to intrude, ...

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